


Einstein's Riddle

by Olivia_ES



Series: Riddlebird Week 2018 [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Riddlebird Week, Riddlebird Week 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 18:14:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14939348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Olivia_ES/pseuds/Olivia_ES
Summary: Sixteen years old and newly emancipated Edward Nygma is working a stand at the fair to earn some money during the summer before he starts college. So far no one has been able to beat any of his puzzles, but a small man in a fancy suit seems fairly confident he can win.For Riddlebird Week - Day One: First Impression





	Einstein's Riddle

**Author's Note:**

> This depiction is mostly based off the comics, but there is some Gotham influence, particularly with Oswald's mom.

# Einstein's Riddle

Edward Nashton sighed and drummed his fingers on the counter of his stand as he surveyed the crowd at the fair. No. Not Nashton. Nygma. He’d buried that old name over a month ago when he’d become emancipated. He looked up at the sign above him that announced: “Match Wits with E. Nygma: The Puzzle King” in bold letters. He sighed in satisfaction. It was taking a little time to fully adjust to his new name, but it was worth it. Edward Nashton was a nobody. A pushover. Ed Nygma would be a _somebody_. Would be the smarter, stronger, more confident man Ed had always wanted to be. He squared his shoulders and returned to studying the crowd. A kid pointed to his stand, clearly saying something about it to his friends. Ed wasn’t always good at reading people’s emotions, but the boy was smiling.  


“Step right up! If you can solve this Rubik’s cube faster than me I’ll give you five dollars! And if I solve it faster, you only have to give me one dollar! Can’t say fairer than that!” The boy stepped towards him.  


“How do I know you haven’t rigged it somehow?” Ed felt a desperate anger clutch his ribcage at the accusation, but he pushed it down. It was a reasonable concern. The boy didn’t know him, and Ed knew himself how common rigged games were at the fair. Sometimes, when one offered a cash prize, he would figure out how it was rigged so he could beat it. It brought a guilty sort of satisfaction to bring cheaters down a peg. Also, he could really use the money. Being emancipated was expensive, as were the textbooks he needed for college in the fall. He was lucky his scholarship included a dorm room.  


“No rigging guaranteed! You can mess up my Rubik’s cube to your heart’s content if you’re worried I somehow memorized the steps I took to scramble it.” The boy took another step forward, but one of his friends grabbed his arm.  


“C’mon man, puzzles are boring. The stand over there has pellet guns!” The group of boys scurried off and Ed took a deep breath, trying to calm the tension building in his shoulders. No one had beaten any of his puzzles yet, but it wasn’t the most popular stand. If only he could get more people to play. Or get people to play for some of the higher prizes. He had more difficult puzzles for bigger cash prizes and had even sprung for a faux-fancy necklace from a thrift store for part of the grand prize hoping it would attract the kind of people that actually played fair games for the cheaply made prizes. He ignored the knot in his stomach that formed whenever he thought about the state of his finances. Which was all the time now. Because living independently meant not getting kicked and belt-whipped and beaten but it was also hard. He couldn’t think about that right now. He would psyche himself out and he no one would come to his stand at all if he was a nervous wreck. He took another deep breath and analyzed the people milling about nearby. Looking for someone who looked like they might be the slightest bit interested. It was hard. He wasn’t very good at reading people emotionally. Maybe he shouldn’t wait for someone to look interested. The guy in the stand on his right running a horseshoe throwing game called out loudly to everyone in earshot. But Ed couldn’t help it he was nervous, and he was bad with people in normal social situations, and- 

His eye suddenly caught on a most unusual-looking man. Very small with a long torso and short arms, probably caused by achondroplasia. He had the longest nose Ed had ever seen and his face was slightly misshapen. Perhaps a mild case of hemifacial microsomia? He was also easily the best-dressed person at the entire fair with dress shoes and a three-piece suit. Wasn’t he hot? It was _summer_. He was with a taller woman who looked to be in her forties. She was a bit overdressed as well in a long lacy dress and real actual bonnet covering wispy blonde hair. It was difficult to gauge the man’s age but he seemed at least half as old as the woman. They were clearly close, but probably not in the romantic sense. A relative perhaps? His mother? Ed hadn’t experienced much motherly affection personally. Or at all. But he knew most kids had mothers that were quite nice to them. He remembered in elementary school watching moms hugging their kids when they picked them up from school. After kindergarten most kids acted embarrassed when this happened. But Ed had always felt a deep jealous burning in his gut whenever he saw it. He felt it a little now watching the pair conversing amiably. The woman leaning down to talk into the man’s ear and pointing. Pointing at Ed’s stand. He straightened his posture and smiled in a way he hoped was charming. Or at least not weird or off-putting. The pair approached and Ed started his spiel.  


“Step right up! Puzzles galore and cash prizes for winners! If you can solve a Rubik’s cube faster than me I’ll give you five dollars! And if-” The suited man cut him off with a sharp wave of his hand.  


“Never mind your smarmy pontificating. What task must I complete to win that string of – undoubtedly plastic - jewelry?” Ed’s smile became more genuine. Finally, his investment was paying off.  


“For that, you must solve Einstein’s Riddle in under twenty-four minutes and forty-two seconds, which is the time it took me to solve it,” he pulled out a piece of paper and a pen, “I’ll warn you it’s considered one of the world’s most difficult. But if you win, in addition to the necklace, you get five dollars for every second faster than me you accomplished it.” Suit-Man’s malformed features twisted into a smirk.  


“I care not for your paltry dollars. My mother covets that ornament and I will win it for her if I have to beat every last one of your infernal games.” Ed readied the timer.  


“We shall see. Now, listen closely:  


There are five houses. The Englishman lives in the red house. The Spaniard owns the dog. Coffee is drunk in the green house. The Ukrainian drinks tea. The green house is immediately to the right of the ivory house. The Old Gold smoker owns snails. Kools are smoked in the yellow house. Milk is drunk in the middle house. The Norwegian lives in the first house. The man who smokes Chesterfields lives in the house next to the man with the fox. Kools are smoked in the house next to the house where the horse is kept. The Lucky Strike smoker drinks orange juice. The Japanese smokes Parliaments. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house. Now, _who drinks water_? _Who owns the zebra_?” 

Ed started the timer and turned over the paper. “Your time starts now. The riddle is written out here and you may use the paper to work on the answer. If you have any clarifying questions you are free to ask, but I cannot guarantee I will be able to answer them.” Suit-Man picked up the pen and began to make a table of the different houses and their occupants.  


“I assume all the houses are different colors, all their residents are of different nationalities, all their pets are different, etcetera?” Suit-Man’s hand flew across the paper as he filled in his table. Ed felt a surge of unease. This guy knew what he was doing.  


“Of course, this is a logic puzzle, not a trick question.” Suit-Man looked up. He had green eyes.  


“And in the sixth sentence, if I am standing across the street from these houses, facing towards them. Is the green house to my ‘right’ of the ivory house?” Green: the color of envy. Green: the color of the dollar bills Ed’s stand traded in. Green: the color of the Mr. Yuck sticker his elementary school science teacher had stuck on cabinets to warn of hazardous chemicals within. Green: Ed’s favorite color in the whole world. 

The timer ticked away. Ed left the man to work, and managed to attract another customer who he promptly beat in the Rubik’s cube game. The time was half-way up, but Suit-Man was more than half-way finished. For the first time, Ed wondered if the man might win. If he might lose. He dismissed the thought. It was a very difficult puzzle, and this man hadn’t even come to the stand out of a personal interest in puzzles, just for the necklace. What were the odds he would happen to be a brilliant logistician? Surely, he had merely worked through the easier bits very quickly and would now stay stuck, stumped by the final pieces, unable to make those last leaps of mental connection just like everyone else. There were just a few minutes left on the clock now. Suit-Man’s mother had wandered off to buy some food and now returned with two ice-cream cones. Two minutes left. Suit-Man had only one box left to fill. One minute left. He was writing something down, then quickly crossed out one of the words in another box and wrote something else. Then, with thirty full seconds left on the clock, he slammed down the pen and shoved the paper towards Ed. Ed felt numb. He paused the clock and checked the paper. Suit-Man could have gotten the answers wrong. But Ed’s nauseous stomach already knew he hadn’t. Ed stared at the perfect table with “water” safely in the Norwegian man’s column and “zebra” placed in the Japanese man’s column. Suit-Man’s green eyes burned in triumph as Ed unhooked the necklace from where it was displayed and handed it to him.  


“I must admit, that was more challenging than I would have expected from such a provincial establishment. Perhaps I should come by another time.” He took the necklace and draped it carefully around his mother’s neck. She had to bend nearly in half for him to do so. There had been thirty seconds left on the clock. Not only had this man utterly humiliated him by literally beating him at his own game, he owed him one hundred and fifty dollars. That was more money than he’d made all day. Why had he put such a high prize on this stupid game? The man fastened the necklace around his mother’s neck as Ed frantically tried to scrape together enough money to pay him. But as he piled the money on the counter the woman handed one of the ice-cream cones off to her son and stepped forward.  


“Ah, young man,” she had a bit of an accent, possibly Eastern European, “we don’t need the money. The necklace was all I wanted. Is not your fault my darling son is such a genius.” She beamed sweetly. Suit-Man rolled his eyes but smiled fondly at her.  


“Yes, fine. Keep your cash and all that jazz. You’re lucky my mother possesses such a charitable heart.” He grasps her gently by the elbow and the pair toddle off, vanishing slowly into the crowd. Ed quickly puts the money away. Mortified, but relieved he straightens out the items on his stand. He absently twists a Rubik’s cube a couple times as he tries to put the only person to win any of his challenges out of his mind. Ed realizes he never learned the man’s name.

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing fanfiction, so constructive criticism is welcome. Also, yes this is late. But I had final exams at my college and I had to prioritize that. Hopefully, I'll catch up before the week is over.
> 
> PS  
> I know some of you may find Penguin beating Riddler at any kind of puzzle contest OOC, but my justification is that Ed is still a child at this point whose brain is still developing and doesn't even write his own riddles yet. And since this is really more of a logic puzzle than an actual riddle, I figured the more grown up and intellectually developed Oswald could figure it out.


End file.
